Dancers on the Shore

Product Description The first and only short story collection by William Melvin Kelley, author of A Different Drummer, and the source from which he drew inspiration for his subsequent novels.Originally published in 1964, this collection of sixteen stories includes three linked sets of stories about the Carey, Bedlow, and Dunford families. They represent the earliest work of William Melvin Kelley and provided a rich source of stories and characters who were to fill out his later novels. Spanning generations from the Deep South during Reconstruction to New York City in the 1960s, these insightful stories depict African American families—their struggles, their heartbreak, and their love. Review “Kelley is able to create characters in a state of becoming. Accordingly, he is wise to return again and again to members of the same family. Each time he does, they unexpectedly reveal more about themselves and each other” —Nat Hentoff, The Reporter About the Author WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY was born in New York City in 1937 and attended the Fieldston School and Harvard. The author of four novels and a short story collection, he was a writer in residence at the State University of New York at Geneseo and taught at The New School and Sarah Lawrence College. He was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement and the Dana Reed Prize for creative writing. He died in 2017. In 2014, Kelley was officially credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with coining the political term "woke" in a 1962 New York Times article entitled "If You're Woke You Dig It." Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Only Man on Liberty Street She was squatting in the front yard, digging with an old brass spoon in the dirt which was an ocean to the islands of short yellow grass. She wore a red and white checkered dress, which hung loosely from her shoulders, and obscured her legs. It was early spring and she was barefoot. Her toes stuck from under the skirt. She could not see the man yet, riding down Liberty Street, his shoulders square, the duster he wore spread back over the horse’s rump, a carpetbag tied with a leather strap to his saddle horn and knocking against his leg. She could not see him until he had dismounted and tied his horse to a small, black, iron Negro jockey and unstrapped the bag. She watched now as he opened the wooden gate, came into the yard, and stood, looking down at her, his face stern, almost gray beneath the brim of his wide hat.She knew him. Her mother called him Mister Herder and had told Jennie that he was Jennie’s father. He was one of the men who came riding down Liberty Street in their fine black suits and starched shirts and large, dark ties. Each of these men had a house to go to, into which, in the evening usually, he would disappear. Only women and children lived on Liberty Street. All of them were Negroes. Some of the women were quite dark, but most were coffee-color. They were all very beautiful. Her mother was light. She was tall, had black eyes, and black hair so long she could sit on it.The man standing over her was the one who came to her house once or twice a week. He was never there in the morning when Jennie got up. He was tall, and thin, and blond. He had a short beard that looked as coarse as the grass beneath her feet. His eyes were blue, like Jennie’s. He did not speak English very well. Jennie’s mother had told her he came from across the sea and Jennie often wondered if he went there between visits to their house.“Jennie? Your mother tells me that you ask why I do not stay at night. Is so?”She looked up at him. “Yes, Mister Herder.” The hair under his jaw was darker than the hair on his cheeks.He nodded. “I stay now. Go bring your mother.”She left the spoon in the dirt, and ran into the house, down the long hall, dark now because she had been sitting in the sun. She found her mother standing over the stove, a great black lid in her left hand, a wo